I'm warming up to my kpw, despite the color splotches and other issues peculiar to me. But here are some areas I think amazon can improve on

Dear amazon,

0/ the text is without a doubt lighter than my k3, which I hearin turn is not as good as k4b. This should not be. Where's the supposed 25% contrast improvement.

1/ slider for book navigation. It's 2012, why are we still stuck with typing in location and page number. We have a slider for the light. What's the touch screen for? See iBooks and numerous similar apps.

Also, I don't see a gesture for next prev chapter in the manual. I thought sliding up and down, but no.

2/ gesture for changing the light. Like two or three finger swipe up down. I have a reader app on iPad with gesture for adjusting screen brightness. You will be amazed by how useful this is once you have it, and you will realize the reason you didn't always adjust the brightness to your liking was you were just too lazy to make the extra taps.

On the kindle, this will be even more awesome as it can be a silent operation (you don't need to show anything on screen, just change the light). No screen activity equals no flashing and you can see effect on your whole text.

3/ airplane mode. Nuf said.
3b/ why do we have to exit a book to get to Settings?

4/ you obviously keep track of my reading time, so why not show those stats to me? How long have I've been reading current chapter / book.

The time remaining estimate is pretty iffy. What would be more useful is pages or screens left in current chapter. I'm a better judge of my reading speed than the software. Remember: Computers are dumb, and in most cases it takes more trouble to be smart than to give users the info to decide for themselves.

5/ you took away audio and tts to save a few bucks. Fine. But why isn't there a model with the extras? Be more like Samsung, less like apple.

6/ you who took away the home button, I sneer in your general direction. Don't take away the home button because it doesn't do much ; make it do more!

7/ previous to k5 it was easy to add custom font, tweak margin and line spacing. Now that's gone. Why? Why? Why don't you want me to have any fun, be happy? Be more like Woz, less like Steve.

I'm warming up to my kpw, despite the color splotches and other issues peculiar to me. But here are some areas I think amazon can improve on

Dear amazon,

1/ slider for book navigation. It's 2012, why are we still stuck with typing in location and page number. We have a slider for the light. What's the touch screen for? See iBooks and numerous similar apps.

2/ gesture for changing the light. Like two or three finger swipe up down. I have a reader app on iPad with gesture for adjusting screen brightness. You will be amazed by how useful this is once you have it, and you will realize the reason you didn't always adjust the brightness to your liking was you were just too lazy to make the extra taps.

3/ airplane mode. Nuf said.
3b/ why do we have to exit a book to get to Settings?

4/ you obviously keep track of my reading time, so why not show those stats to me? How long have I've been reading current chapter / book.

The time remaining estimate is pretty iffy. What would be more useful is pages or screens left in current chapter. I'm a better judge of my reading speed than the software. Remember: Computers are dumb, and in most cases it takes more trouble to be smart than to give users the info to decide for themselves.

5/ you took away audio and tts to save a few bucks. Fine. But why isn't there a model with the extras? Be more like Samsung, less like apple.

6/ you who took away the home button, I sneer in your general direction. Don't take away the home button because it doesn't do much ; make it do more!

7/ previous to k5 it was easy to add custom font, tweak margin and line spacing. Now that's gone. Why? Why? Why don't you want me to have any fun, be happy? Be more like Woz, less like Steve.

8/ why is this thing so heavy?

0/ Contrast is an inhumane measure. It means the distinguishability of something. With KPW lights on, the background is white, but the text remains somewhat black/dark grey. If the black is only a thin line, doesn't matter, it's black over white, and has a huge contrast, like a black pea in the can (unwanted but distinguishable).

1/ Battery is spent changing pages. While in an LCD screen the page turn is almost the same as keeping the same page in terms of energy, rapidly advancing pages in e-ink, let's say, 2 pages a second, means you can discharge a full battery in 20 minutes.

2/ The Paperwhite capacitive screen recognizes two touches, and it is for font scaling in pinching. Doing something more would confuse the device and most humans.

4/ I didn't find where now (if I find, I'll update post), but remember seeing that Amazon don't keep your reading statistics and it all is device-only.

5/ Amazon thinks an e-reader should be kept simple so you can have the best one for a hundred-some bucks.

6/ Less buttons, now more like Apple, less like Samsung.

7/ It was never easy. Predefined little options, possible hacks, all the extra was under-the-table.

8/ Capacitive screen. Do you know the loads of glass it takes? Also, the body seems empowered compared to plastiquy KT. And while LED is light, it requires the connectors. More resolution doesn't come from heaven.

1/ Battery is spent changing pages. While in an LCD screen the page turn is almost the same as keeping the same page in terms of energy, rapidly advancing pages in e-ink, let's say, 2 pages a second, means you can discharge a full battery in 20 minutes.

2/ The Paperwhite capacitive screen recognizes two touches, and it is for font scaling in pinching. Doing something more would confuse the device and most humans.

4/ I didn't find where now (if I find, I'll update post), but remember seeing that Amazon don't keep your reading statistics and it all is device-only.

5/ Amazon thinks an e-reader should be kept simple so you can have the best one for a hundred-some bucks.

6/ Less buttons, now more like Apple, less like Samsung.

7/ It was never easy. Predefined little options, possible hacks, all the extra was under-the-table.

8/ Capacitive screen. Do you know the loads of glass it takes? Also, the body seems empowered compared to plastiquy KT. And while LED is light, it requires the connectors. More resolution doesn't come from heaven.

1/ Why on earth would they do it that way? You can have a simple slider consisting out of ~20 bars like with the light control, once you stopped sliding it jumps to position you stopped. That would be in no way harder on the battery than the light control.

2/ Meaning it could do 2 finger gestures just fine. Like 2 fingers sliding up and down for light control. You want seriously argue that that would *confuse* people???

3/ Isn't there an airplane mode already implemented?

4+ is a bit silly, though. I would very much welcome a model with page turn buttons, however.

This is exactly what I see when I compare PW and KT.
Really, the right (KT) looks better to me.

Something is really off in the fonts. With the lights off, the contrast in the PW seems a bit better than the contrast on the KT (very marginally, but it is) but the fonts still look better on the KT. Just like the example you posted there, the KT fonts are easier to read.

Also, I think this has something to do with the screen in between and the illumination... but I can't shake the feeling that the PW is a 'screen', whereas the KT felt more like a book.

Regarding the OP, I agree with all.

Here are my complaints. Don't get me wrong... it's a nice ebook reader. But plenty could be better:

The device is surprisingly heavy.
The lack of 'swipe to jump chapter bothers me'.
Navigation is clumsy, as in all Kindles. Why no slide bar?
I want the home button back as well. And page-turn buttons too. And a switch for airplane mode somewhere.
No TTS sucks. Smaller storage stinks. Bummer. Neither is a deal-breaker though.
My battery keeps draining in 10-12 hours. Maybe it's defective. Waiting to see.
Wish the frame was wider. Holding it is awkward.
Ads on the home page stink. I paid for non-SO, why push books on me?

He meant fix the Airplane mode to allow you to turn off WiFi while in a book or at home page. We have the same problem with the K4.

While reading a book on the PW we can toggle the bottom-left text notification between Location #, Time Left in Chapter, and Time Left in Book without any menu intervention. We simply touch the bottom-left text and it toggles through the options. I see no reason why we couldn't do something similar with Airplane mode. Touch the Airplane icon and it toggles Airplane mode off and WiFi/3G mode on and displays the WiFi/3G icon. Touch the WiFi/3G icon and it toggles WiFi/3G mode off and Airplane mode on and displays the Airplane icon. Convincing Amazon is another story though.

This is exactly what I see when I compare PW and KT.
Really, the right (KT) looks better to me.

Something is really off in the fonts. With the lights off, the contrast in the PW seems a bit better than the contrast on the KT (very marginally, but it is) but the fonts still look better on the KT. Just like the example you posted there, the KT fonts are easier to read.

The higher resolution of the PW might work against it here.

If you take a font size which is, lets say, 10 pixels high on the KT it would be on the paperwhite 12.8 pixels high. But since you obviously cannot have partly lit pixels the PW would render those with grayscales. So the font will appear washed out.

It might be worthwhile to experiment with different fontsizes (and maybe fonts, too). Amanzon might have screwed up the upscaling, if they left it the same as with the KT fonts which are sharp on the KT will be blurry on the PW. If thats the case it should be easily fixable with a firmware update, though.

While reading a book on the PW we can toggle the bottom-left text notification between Location #, Time Left in Chapter, and Time Left in Book without any menu intervention. We simply touch the bottom-left text and it toggles through the options. I see no reason why we couldn't do something similar with Airplane mode. Touch the Airplane icon and it toggles Airplane mode off and WiFi/3G mode on and displays the WiFi/3G icon. Touch the WiFi/3G icon and it toggles WiFi/3G mode off and Airplane mode on and displays the Airplane icon.

To answer myself, yes, there are definitely upscaling issues with the new resolution.

Here a closeup comparsion of a "b" from jswindens example (left PW, right KT).
Note the far higher amount of grayscale pixels on the PW. With the KT you have far more "hard" edges, which makes the font appear sharper.

I think the OP makes a lot of sense. This e-reader seems very innovative, but in a sense it is the first of a new generation of e-readers. Assuming others can duplicate the tech, other vendors will offer the improvements mentioned. Amazon may offer such improvements too, but if they don't others will. But you will likely pay more, perhaps a lot more, for the improvements.

Taking advantage of touch, varieties of swipes, improved navigation and settings adjustment, more robust collection management, darker yet crisp text adjustments, default overrides, bezel ergonomics, etc. If the e-reader market gets a lot bigger, Apple, Google, and Microsoft could offer good competition. I'm jumping into the e-reader market as a customer after decades of only reading DTBs. But there needs to be a real return for the big vendors to want to enter.

Let's hope the e-reader does not go the way of commercial airplane travel, where a cheap ticket is all that matters.

To answer myself, yes, there are definitely upscaling issues with the new resolution.

Here a closeup comparsion of a "b" from jswindens example (left PW, right KT).
Note the far higher amount of grayscale pixels on the PW. With the KT you have far more "hard" edges, which makes the font appear sharper.

Unfortunately I down-scaled the the PW screen shot to make it appear apprx the same size as the Touch screen shot, so use the attached screen shots below which are not scaled (actual size).

Unfortunately I down-scaled the the PW screen shot to make it appear apprx the same size as the Touch screen shot, so use the attached screen shots below which are not scaled (actual size).

Ah, thanks, that improved things. Updated the picture in my link.

The PW has now fewer upscaling issues, but they are still there. The major issue is IMO that at this font size the lines of the letters are on the PW due to its higher resolution 3 pixels wide while on the KT they are 2 pixels wide, which makes the letters appear less "fine".

Maybe its just a bad font and/or font size for the PW, there are likely other configurations where the KT looks worse.
That will not help you much if you prefer that configuration for reading, of course.

While reading a book on the PW we can toggle the bottom-left text notification between Location #, Time Left in Chapter, and Time Left in Book without any menu intervention. We simply touch the bottom-left text and it toggles through the options. I see no reason why we couldn't do something similar with Airplane mode. Touch the Airplane icon and it toggles Airplane mode off and WiFi/3G mode on and displays the WiFi/3G icon. Touch the WiFi/3G icon and it toggles WiFi/3G mode off and Airplane mode on and displays the Airplane icon. Convincing Amazon is another story though.

I didn't know you could do that.
Would be cool if they added a 4th option. Page numbers. But who would ever think of that, right, when you have location... which is obviously so handy, intuitive and widely used...